Sunday, August 31, 2008

This album's been on the blogosphere before, but I wanted to get a full quality rip up here.

When Barack Obama gave his nomination speech the other day, much was made of the fact that it fell on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous Washington speech, and many were moved to think about the progress that had been made in the intervening years.

This album comes about a decade into that progress : In January 1969, newly elected African American representatives of the 77th U.S. Congress joined six incumbents to form the "Democratic Select Committee". In 1971 the Committee was renamed the Congressional Black Caucus.

In 1974 someone had the great idea of holding concerts and dinners featuring Kool and the Gang, Curtis Mayfield, Gladys Knight and The Pips, War, and Jimmy Witherspoon, to raise money for the caucus' activities, and this album features excerpts from those events in September ...

back cover detail

This is a great funky album, capturing everyone at the top of their game. After a series of crowd "Amen!"s for the artists, Kool and the Gang kick off with a thirteen minute version of the jazzy instrumental "Wild and Peaceful" , the title track from their 1973 album rhodes, flute and a sax solo that builds and sustains.

'Give Me Your Love' excerpt

Curtis Mayfield comes in with a version of "Give Me Your Love"from "Superfly". The announcer tells us he'd just released the album "Sweet Exorcist". It's great to hear Mayfield live in this mid-70s period - as good as his 1971 live album is, this 1974 band is tight.

Gladys Knighttells us that she and the Pips had just completed the soundtrack for the film "Claudine" with Mayfield, and they launch into a version of that albums's funkiest track "On and On", written by Mayfield.

'Gypsy Man' excerpt

Waropen side two with a pounding sixteen minute take on their latin-funk-rock hit "Gypsy Man", from their '73 album "Deliver The Word", which rises and falls with in its dynamic - the preview above is a low key section - hey, it's Sunday morning here ...
War members Howard Johnson and Lonnie Jordan produced this album along with Jerry Goldstein.

Bluesman Jimmy Witherspoon completes the proceedings with an intimate version of "Goin' Down Slow", with a sudden breakout guitar solo from Robben Ford.

So enjoy this album, and don't be fooled by "pro-life" hockey moms, support Obama in '08!

TRACKLIST

01. "Wild and Peaceful" - Kool & The Gang(13:13) Written by Ronald Dell - Kool and the Gang

you remember my problem for opening Leon Ware - Rockin' You Eternally with sound editors (sound forge), converters (music converter) and burners (nero), right? of course i gave up on Leon Ware, but strangely the wav files for Mark Murphy II were nicely working, while Shamek Farrah - First Impressions are doing exactly the same fuss, refusing to be opened with anything else than players (winamp). hopefully your investigations drove you to the solution because i'm totally desperate that i can't take advantages from these wav files :(i'm crossing fingers for this one...

Simon, you spoil me and everybody out there who visits here :-)being a huge Curtis fan and early War too btw, I must say I'm thrilled to have a chance to hear these versions...I expect that "Wattstax" kinda vibe, I guess.Thanks as big as the world and everything on it! -you had any chance of listening to that Kiruna yet?(I know you're a busy man :-)peace, E-mile

Thanks again, Simon. After hearing it at a mate's some years back, I've been keeping my eye out for this one. Love the play-by-play review.

I've noticed recently that a lot of .aiff files made w/ iTunes or Garage Band can not be converted to .wav w/o those same software apps. Never had a problem with the format until the emergence of iPods. I'll try El Goog's solution but so far I've just had to steer clear of .aiff files altogether.

Cheeba, Re the AIFF problem - I didn't use those apps - for the two problem albums (Leon Ware's "Rocking You Eternally" and Shamek Farrah's "First Impressions") I just dragged the tracks off CDs, and they come up marked as AIFF on my comp.

I've re-labelled them "AIFF" and when I get a chance will actually convert to those two to WAV and re-up. All the other albums marked as "WAV" here are recorded from vinyl into Protools as WAVs, so should be fine ...

Ages ago I mentioned another live date with an odd combination of acts and a terrific live version of War's "Gypsy Man." I was finally going to put it up on my blog when I discovered it's already up elsewhere. Anyway, the album is an odd hodgepodge but don't miss the Willie Bobo and the awesome Gypsy Man.

I know this is a long shot here, but is there anyway to re-up the links? I used to have this LP on vinyl, lost it along the way somehow and thought I'd never see it ever again. But low and behold, your awesome blog had it at one point. Thanks in advance.

I'm getting a little afraid that my blog is under attack. Someone's deleted the uploads for my latest post, and now this one. I will upload at some stage, but am too busy right now. Leave a comment with a blogger account to be informed.

Hi Madjik, Nothing's up for now, it's just that if you leave a message here from a blogger account (like you have now) , you'll get an email when I post here that I've re-upped the files (which coud be more than a week .. )

YES! I was one of the requesters earlier of a re-up, and hadn't checked back here lately so I'm so glad I did! I too have this on vinyl, but can't wait to hear it on iPod and in high quality. THANK YOU for this, Simon!